William Blake, Andy Warhol, Joan Miró, Joseph Beuys, Pablo Picasso, Keith Haring and many more - the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek presents 70 selected pieces from its varied and high-ranking collection of artist's books. The exhibition runs until January 7, 2018. See a virtual preview.

Due to maintenance works, the supplementary presentation of our digital content via DFG Viewer might be temporarily unavailable on September 4 and 5. Our digital objects remain accessible, since the standard viewers of the MDZ will not be affected.

On its website, the Literature Portal Bavaria has offered a comprehensive overview of Bavaria as a country of literature, of authors and of literature events for exactly five years. On the occasion of this anniversary on 16 July 2017, we would like to present an overview of the work of the preceding years.

Autorenlexikon & Zeitschriften (encyclopaedia of authors & periodicals): Almost 900 portraits of Bavarian authors and over 70 literature journals are available online.

Nachlässe (personal papers): Over 1,600 sets of personal papers can be searched.

Literaturland (land of literature): Over 40 literary excursions, tracing the steps of Bertolt Brecht, Oskar Maria Graf and Helmut Dietl among others, can be made, and 140 memorial sites and city portraits can be explored virtually.

Themen (topics): A total of 25 literary topics can be explored, among them "summer retreat", "a stroll across the Oktoberfest", "science fiction & utopia", "amazons", "villains" and more.

Blog: Contains reports about events, series, for example about Ludwig Thoma and dialect, interviews and exclusive contributions by authors, among other things about Gert Heidenreich, Nora Gomringer, SAID, Lena Gorelik and Thomas Lang.

Institutionenlexikon (encyclopaedia of institutions): A comprehensive register of literary institutions with over 330 profiles.

More than 1.9 million digitized volumes, the largest fleet of scanning devices of all German cultural institutions, innovative projects such as the image-based siliarity search, the newspaper portal digiPress, apps, 3D digitization, new presentation systems, a collaboration with Google as well as the Stanford University Libraries or Fraunhofer Gesellschaft. This and much more characterize the digitization strategy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB). BSB is now celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Munich Digitization Center (MDZ). The anniversary will be celebrated on Tuesday evening, 27 June 2017, with a ceremony at the Bavarian State Library. see press release of the BSB (in German language)

Qualitative linking, combined search and various visualization options - the Deutsche Biographie has been relaunched with advanced features and new content. See also the latest press release (in German) from BAdW and BSB.

[29.06.2016]

Digitization of works for „VD16 digital“ complete

After approximately ten years of time, the digitization process for the DFG project „VD16 digital“ was completed. More than 26,000 works have been scanned by BSB's scanning facilities. BSB was the first institution worldwide to use robot scanning technology with books of the 16th century. The digital copies are available online

The newspaper portal Digipress replaces the previous version, providing many new features. 29 already digitized newspapers from the beta version of Digipress will be migrated gradually to this system. Successively, another 1,000, predominantly Bavarian newspapers will follow as full text versions.

BSB and Stanford University Libraries have signed a cooperative agreement. Central areas of cooperation are joint activities in the field of Linked Data, the Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), cataloging, digital preservation, as well as an international exchange program for librarians and joint training opportunities. See BSB's press relase (in German).

Our new download service DaFO („Daten für die Forschung“ - „Data for research“) ist online and can be used for non-commercial purposes. We offer 300 ppi JPEG files and machine readable OCR text (if available) of 1.2 Million copyright-free books. „DaFo“ is currently still in test mode, but available worldwide. Please see BSB's press release (in German) for more information.

The collection and long-term preservation of websites has become a new field of activity for libraries, archives and museums, as well as the Bavarian State Library. Our digital preservation unit is going to host a workshop (in German language) on this topic on March 10, 2016.

Our Biographical Portal was extended to include the data of the Austrian Music Lexicon (OeML). Thus the stock of seven resource will be listed, including the National biographical collections in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia, as well as two regional electronic reference works and the mentioned OeML.

[28.01.2016]

Happy New Year

The team of the MDZ wishes all users of the Digital Collections a Happy New Year

Johann Jakob Fugger (1516-1575), member of the famous Augsburg merchant family, ordered the "Ehrenspiegel" to glorify the House of Habsburg. Clemens Jäger (ca. 1500-1561) is believed to be the main author. The magnificent illustrations are associated with Jörg Breu the Younger (ca. 1510-1547). The first volume of the "Ehrenspiegel" (Augsburg 1555) is attended to the history of the House of Habsburg up to Frederick III. (1415-1493). The second volume (Augsburg 1559) addresses the life and deeds of Emperor Maximilian I (1493-1519).

Petrus Grillinger's large-sized Latin Bible (1428) is the most important work of a Salzburg studio, where several artists worked. The illuminators received many inspirations for their pictures from very different sources: from French Bibles, Bohemian illuminated manuscripts under King Wenceslaus, the workshops at the court of Vienna and works of contemporary panel painting. By combining tradition and innovation, unique works of art came into being. These artworks were role models for future Bible illustrations again – some of them miniatures of the Ottheinrich Bible. The Grillinger Bible is part of the next year's exhibition "Bilderwelten: Buchmalerei zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit" ("Worlds of images: Illumination between medieval and modern times").

The Historisches Lexikon Bayerns is a comprehensive online encyclopedia on Bavarian history. After a major technical revision, this reference work comes with a variety of new features and a new design.

[08.12.2015]

System maintenance work completed

System maintenance work is completed. All services are up and running again. Thank you for your patience.

[25.11.2015]

Downtime for System maintenance

Due to urgent system maintenance works, the browsing functionality of our digital collections by place and time was temporarely turned off. All other functions, e.g. collection view, search, image-based similarity search as well as direct access to any of our digitized books are available without constraints.

Later this year, the hundred thousandth digital object, which has been scanned by the Munich DigitiZation Center (MDZ), will be put online. In 1997, the founding year of the MDZ, no one would ever have thought that this figure could be reached. With a throughput of about 1,000 PDF downloads per day and over 30 terabytes of data volume per year the digital copies of the MDZ enjoy great popularity among users. Download queen is currently the Nuremberg Chronicle (Schedelsche Weltchronik). The 100,000 MDZ copies are provided in addition to the more than 1 million works digitized during the co-operation with Google.

The Bavarian State Library has an excellent Chinese collection of international standing, which includes about 230,000 printed volumes and 3,000 manuscripts. Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the oldest works – from the 7th to 18th century – are recataloged and completely digitized. Now the millionth page has been digitized in the Munich DigitiZation Center (MDZ) of the Bavarian State Library. This corresponds to approximately 11,000 printed volumes and a considerable number of manuscripts. The whole message (in German language)

Digital Future – The television journal "Einblick" (insight) of the Bavarian Broadcast Corp. devotes its latest episode to the digitization and presentation of the unique and extensive library holdings of the Bavarian State Library.To the TV report

The Biographie-Portal enables access to more than 100,000 scholarly biographies of persons from all social backgrounds and nearly all periods of German, Austrian, and Swiss history. The portal now also includes numerous science-based contributions from the "Slovenska biografija" (SBI), which is supervised by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

The digitization of the "Sionsharfe" has been completed, the magazine can be viewed in the Digital Collections . The "Sionsharfe" was founded around 1876 by Johann Martin Schleyer (1831-1912), at that time pastor in Litzelstetten near Konstanz. In 1879 he used the magazine to present his constructed language Volapük for the first time to the public. His contribution about the draft of an international language was published as a supplement to the journal. The presentation of the "Sionsharfe" is realized with support of the Martinus-Bibliothek-Mainz that holds the magazine – unique in this completeness according to current knowledge.

The "Coordination project for the further development of Optical Character Recognition (OCR)" examines and describes methods of automatic text recognition. On the one hand, there will be developed concepts for optimal workflows. On the other hand, a standardization of OCR-related processes and their metadata is to be achieved. One of the main goals is the conceptual preparation of the complete transformation of the printed German cultural heritage (16th to 19th centuries) in a machine-readable form. Project partners are the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, in particular the German Text Archive (DTA), and the Bavarian State Library in Munich. The project started on 01/09/2015 and is sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). More information about the project is available at http://www.ocr-d.de/.

With this app, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek makes more than 30 German-language first editions from its extensive collections available in digital form. We invite you to discover some masterpieces of German literature on your smart phone or tablet, in a form you have not known so far. Available at the Apple App-Store for free.

Please note BSB's reduced opening hours in August. Registration: 10,00–17,00, Reading Room Music, Maps and Images: 09,00–12,30, East European, Oriental and Asian Reading Room: 09,00–12,30. The main reading room will be open as usual from Mon-Sun, 8,00-24,00. The Bavarian State Library will be closed on August 15 (Assumption Day).

Access to image-based resources is fundamental to research, scholarship and the transmission of
cultural knowledge. Until now, much of the Internet’s image-based resources have been locked up in silos, with access restricted to custom-built applications. The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) supports uniform display of images of books, maps, scrolls, manuscripts, musical scores and archival material from participating institutions for display, manipulation, measurement and annotation by scholars and students working individually or in groups around the world. For more information see the actual press release and visit http://iiif.io.

„Sunflowers“ by van Gogh, the royal crown of Bavaria, Dürer's „Self-Portrait Wearing a Coat with Fur Collar“, the fairy tale castles of Ludwig II. and more than 200,000 other objects are being presented in an enhanced version of bavarikon, the Portal for art, culture and regional studies. BSB and it's Munich DigitiZation Centre is one of 13 contributing institutions and the technical provider of this project.

[11.05.2015]

Closing Times In May 2015

Please notice that the Bavarian State Library will be closed on May 1 (International Workers' Day), on May 13 (non-public event), as well as on May 14 (Ascension Thursday).

After the great success of the reading of the entire Inferno of Dante's Divine Comedy in 2014, the second part of the Dante Marathon with the reading of the Purgatory (Purgatorio) will take place sunday, april 26 at the BSB. The reading will take place in Italian with German surtitles. Block 1: 9.30 - 11 am / block 2: 11.30 am - 1 pm / block 3: 1.30 - 3 pm / block 4: 3.30 - 5 pm / block 5: 5.30 - 7 pm. Location: Bavarian State Library, Ludwigstr 16, 80539 Munich, Reading Room Music, Maps and Images (1st floor). Admission is free of charge. Registration required. Further informationen and registration

Bavaria's Minister of Science Dr. Ludwig Spaenle is to return the oldest Polish Pontifical, the so-called Pontifical of Płock to the Catholic Church of Poland this week. At the Polish Foreign Ministry, Mr. Spaenle will hand over this valuable historical manuscript to the Bishop of Płock, Piotr Libera. Basis of the return is the Washington Agreement. The manuscript is available online. Detailed Informationen are available in BSB's latest press release (in German language)

[13.04.2015]

Closing times and shutdown for scheduled maintenance

The Bavarian State Library will be closed from 3 to 6 April 2015 (Good Friday to Easter Monday). Some functions of the OPACplus catalog system will be deactivated for scheduled maintenance from 5 to 7 April 2015 (4 PM CET). Our Digital Collections will not be affected.

An exhibition in the entry hall of our Reading Room for Music, Maps and Images presents several plans, projects and perspectives of the building of the Bavarian State Library which were not realized the intended way. You are cordially invited to follow the thought experiments of imaginary buildings and to ask yourself the question: „What would have happened if...?“. Until September 18, Monday to Friday 9 AM to 5 PM (CET), closed on bank holidays. Admission is free.

Our library presents a small cabinet exhibition on the topic of „Dervishes and dervish orders in the late Ottoman empire“, forming part of the series „kOSTproben“ (samples from the east). It casts a light on the mystical movement in the late Ottoman empire, dervishes, dervish orders and dervish convents. Until April 17, 2015 in the entrance area of the East European, Oriental and Asian Reading Room. Monday to Friday 9 AM to 5 PM (CET), closed on bank holidays. Admission is free.

The hitherto Vice Director General of the Bavarian State Library, Dr. Klaus Ceynowa, will be appointed Director General effective from April 1, 2015. The Bavarian State Government has taken this personnel decision at their cabinet meeting yesterday. Dr. Rolf Griebel, the previous Director General of the State Library, retired at the end of December 2014.

Due to an event, the library will be closed on February 12, 2015 from 5 PM (CET); the General Reading Room will be closed all day. On February 17, 2014 (Shrove Tuesday/„Faschingsdienstag“) the Bavarian State Library will be generally closed to the public.

On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the death of Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514), the Bavarian State Library shows his personal copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle which came to Munich in the 16th century together with the whole library of the Schedel family. The gradual construction of the collection is traced through the stations of Schedels life. To March 1, 2015.

By the end of 2014, our long-term preservation system recorded 1,229,806,792 files (574 terabytes). The growth of the past year was 72 million files (62 TB). The large part of this information comes from the digitization activities in recent years.

On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the death of Hartmann Schedel, the Bavarian State Library shows his personal copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle which came to Munich in the 16th century together with the whole library of the Schedel family. The gradual construction of the collection is traced through the stations of Schedels life. Exhibition from November 19, 2014 to March 1, 2015.

The Bellifortis by Konrad Kyeser illustrates on more than 300 pages military technology from the perspective of the Middle Ages. It also contains the first known picture of a chastity belt. The manuscript was created between 1402 and 1405 in Bohemia.

The estate of Therese, princess of Bavaria contains an extensive collection of photographs from travels who led the princess between 1871 and 1911 to Spain, Portugal and Greece, Tunis and Algeria, northern Europe, Russia, Brazil and the west of South America. This collection is available online now.

[30.09.2014]

System maintenance works

Due to urgent system maintenance works at the BSB, the following services will be unavailable from October 3 (00:00) to October 6, 2014 (approx. 10:00 AM CEST): order, reservation, extension, account features in the OPACplus (research remains possible), fee payment at the pay machines, issue and return desks (General Reading Room). Access to our Digital Collections will not be affected an remains available without any restriction.

The Nuremberg chronicle of the physician and humanist Hartmann Schedel (1440 to 1514) was published from 1493 in different editions. Schedel's library is considered the most comprehensive private collection of books in Germany, which has survived from the 15th century. Schedel was interested in almost all areas of knowledge in the late Middle Ages. The Bavarian State Library preserves over 370 manuscripts and 460 prints from the possession of Hartmann Schedel today.

It recorded an increase of our Digital Collections by 198,024 titles. In the same time, the long-term archive grew to 201,501 objects resp. 67 terabytes. We would like to thank our users for their interest, finding expression in 88,738,554 page views and 892,804 downloads of PDFs from our various online services.

The „Music Treasures Consortium“ of the Library of Congress prvides online access to the most important music manuscripts and print materials from the collections of the most prestigious music libraries. Now the metadata of 125 music manuscripts of the BSB are available on this platform.

[23.08.2014]

Closed

The Bavarian State Library will be closed on August 15, 2014 (Assumption Day).

As the earliest preserved gospel in Hungarian language (1466), the so-called "Munich codex" is the core specimen of the Hungarian manuscript collection of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Cod.hung. 1) and forms part of the so-called "Hussite bible". It can be regarded as the philological-historical monument of the research of Hungary. The work is now available to the academic world not only in the form of the edition by Szabó T. Ádám, but also as complete digital facsimile.

On the occasion of this year's 150th anniversary of the accession to the throne of King Ludwig II, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek presents an extensive update of the popular and award-winning app Ludwig II - Walking in the Footsteps of a Fairytale King.

Due to maintenance works, the following services of the BSB will be unavailable this saturday (presumably from 7 AM to 6 PM CEST):
Account function in the OPACplus, Internet access in the BSB, E-media access. The access to our digital collections will not be affected.

On the 100th Anniversary of the death of writer and Nobel Prize winner Paul Heyse, the Bavarian State Library shows until August 1, 2014the exhibition „Paul Heyse - A favorite of the Muses (1830-1914)“. The focus is on sources from Heyse's extensive estate preserved by our library. Exhibition runs from April 4 to June 22, 2014 and is free of charge. More than 170 titles by Paul Heyse are available online.

[23.06.2014]

Closed

The Bavarian State Library will be closed on June 19, 2014 (Corpus Christi public holiday).

This richly illustrated magazine presents buildings, interiors, furniture, ceramics and other artistically designed things of everyday life from 1897 until 1929. Other major topics are landscape architecture and garden or park design. A project supported by the University Library of the Technical University of Munich, the missing volumes presented are available.

The Phonographische Zeitschrift was published from 1900 to 1938, running to over 34,000 pages in that period. As "the journal serving the entire music and voice-equipment industry" (its subheading until 1933), the publication is a unique source of information, in text and images, on phonography in the first third of the 20th century. Digitization was realized in cooperation with Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Berlin, Berlin State Library and Deutsches Museum, Munich

[02.06.2014]

The Bavarian State Library will be closed on 8 and 9 June 2014 (Whitsun). For operational reasons the order function in the OPACplus will not be available from 7 June 2014 (8 PM) to 9 June 2014 (8 AM) (searches are possible).

[30.05.2014]

The Bavarian State Library will be closed on May 29, 2014 (Ascension Day).

The world-famous Carmina Burana (Clm 4660), a unique collection of manuscripts with poems and dramatic texts from the 11th to 12th century, have recently been digitized. The volume containing the „Songs from Beuern“, found in the year of 1803 at the monastery of Benediktbeuern and brought to Munich, is being preserved at the Bavarian State Library. Also available online: The Fragmenta Burana (Clm 4660 a).

On the 100th Anniversary of the death of writer and Nobel Prize winner Paul Heyse, the Bavarian State Library shows the exhibition „Paul Heyse - A favorite of the Muses (1830-1914)“. The focus is on sources from Heyse's extensive estate preserved by our library. Exhibition runs from April 4 to June 22, 2014 and is free of charge. More than 170 titles by Paul Heyse are available online.

World War I, which broke out a hundred years ago, is nowadays subject to intense scientific research. The Bavarian State Library has a large collections of sources, research literature and digital media on this episode of history. Numerous works of the World War I Collection have already been digitized. A comprehensive overview of the holdings of BSB's holdings about the World War I can be found on the platform „Clio online“.

The Pericopes of Henry II (Clm 4452) is a masterpiece of Ottonian book illumination from the famous scriptorium of the Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau, making it one of the most important manuscripts of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. In 2003 it was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. Now this manuscript has been fully digitized.

[13.03.2014]

Behind the scenes - Guided tour of the repository of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

Our guided tours (in German) offer a look behind the scenes: An informative tour of our repository gives you a personal experience of the dimensions of our institution and provides you with many interesting facts about our unique collections. The 2014 dates: 25 April, 27 June, 22 August, 24 October, 05 December, alway at 4 pm. Meeting point is the main stairway in the entrance hall. No registration necessary for individuals.

On March 4, 2014 (Shrove Tuesday/"Faschingsdienstag") the Bavarian State Library will be closed to the public. Please note that due to maintenance work on this day, central services - among other things the OPACplus (research and ordering) and the E-media Access - will not be available. Access to our Digital Collections will generally be available this day, but might be affected too.

In the presentation "con moltissima passione" the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek shows selected new monographs on the history of music of Italy from the special collection field and specialised information service on musicology. It takes place on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi in October 2013.

On the occasion of the conference "Cipriano de Rore at the Crossroads" the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek presents from February 26 till March 21 manuscripts and prints of works of the composer Cipriano de Rore (1515/1516–1565) in the treasure vault.

[21.02.2014]

Annual report 2012

The annual report 2012 of the Bavarian State Library is available online (in German language only). It also reflects the public interest in the various services of the Munich DigitiZation Center. MDZ says thank you for 67.5 million page views and 799,040 PDF downloads in 2012.

The Prayer Book of Emperor Maximilian I is a prayer book in Latin, which was printed 1514/15 in Augsburg in an edition of ten copies. The unique copy of the Bavarian State Library, containing illustrations by Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach the Elder, has now been digitized.

[30.01.2013]

Maintenance Works on Tuesday, January 28

Due to maintenance work, this service will be temporarely unavailable between 11 am and 2 pm (CET) today.

In the presentation "con moltissima passione" the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek shows selected new monographs on the history of music of Italy from the special collection field and specialised information service on musicology. The presentation has been arranged in the hallway in front of the reading room for music. It takes place on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi in October 2013, which prompted the publication of numerous new works.

In the year of 2013, the BSB had 209,880,000 files processed for long-term preservation. This represents an overall increase of 67 terabytes. The long-term preservation system currently comprises a total of 1.15 billion files resp. 512 terabytes. Read more.